Tran: 'I always believe' in 'common ground'

State Senate candidate Dean Tran says he takes after his father and gets along with everyone, a quality he says would make him an effective state senator. SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / Ashley Green

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(This is the last of four State Senate candidate profiles. The special election is Tuesday, Dec. 5)

FITCHBURG -- Hours before Gov. Charlie Baker appeared at a fundraiser for Dean Tran, the Republican state Senate candidate explained in measured speech that his greatest political influence was not a political figure, but his father Nahn Tran, a 25-year veteran of the South Vietnamese army who moved with his family to the United States nearly 40 years ago.

"He has a personality that gets along with everybody and he has great respect for everyone who he encounters," Tran said, describing his late father. "He has not a single bone of hatred in him."

Like father, like son, according to Tran, who sat in his Fitchburg home last week discussing his candidacy as his family's cat, Mouse, strolled in and out of the room.

"I believe I have a lot of those qualities that my father had," he said.

Tran -- who is running for the Worcester-Middlesex District state Senate seat that former Sen. Jennifer Flanagan resigned from to take a seat on the state's Cannabis Control Commission -- is a self-described fiscal conservative on the Republican ticket. He will face off against Democrat Sue Chalifoux Zephir, Green-Rainbow Party's Charlene DiCalogero and unenrolled candidate Claire Freda on Dec. 5.

Running in the typically left-leaning state of Massachusetts, Tran described his view of politics as nonpartisan with an emphasis on building coalitions.

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"I always believe there's a common ground," he said, adding he feels he has shown this during his 12 years as an at-large city councilor.

As a city councilor, he said he was involved in drafting a city ordinance governing where Level 2 and 3 sex offenders can live in relation to schools and other meeting places. Though this law and ones like it were overturned by a state court, he said it is among one of his top accomplishments while on City Council and something he would be able to tackle if elected to a position in the Statehouse.

Among his other priorities: lowering taxes, promoting economic development, fighting the opioid crisis, bringing more infrastructure dollars west of Interstate 495 and reforming Chapter 70 school funding.

As the sole registered Republican in the race, Tran, 42, has captured the attention of several state and area party members.

On his way into a private fundraising event for the candidate at the Fay Club Wednesday, Gov. Baker paused for several minutes in one of the club's wood paneled rooms to speak to the press about Tran.

"I really like seeing people who have done the work of local government serving at the state level. I think they bring a grounded perspective to the process and the decision making that's really important," said Baker. Later the governor said that although he and Tran differ on some social policies, it is not the first time he has endorsed someone with opposing viewpoints.

Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam. After the end of the Vietnam War, his parents and six children, including Tran, fled to Thailand where they lived in a refugee camp for two years.

"They refer to people like us (as) the 'boat people,'" he said. "We spent about 12 days in the ocean and then drifted to Thailand."

In 1980, when Tran was 4 years old, a Catholic priest in Clinton, Mass., sponsored his family's entry into the United States.

"We benefited from the green card process as refugees and then we benefited from the naturalization process to become citizens," he said.

The experience shaped his thoughts about immigration and belief "there should be a process for people who want to come to this country to achieve a better life and become citizens."

Six years after moving to Clinton, the family relocated to Fitchburg, where Tran lived until his graduation from Fitchburg High School.

He attended Brandeis University and lived in Waltham before returning to Fitchburg in 2001 with his wife Kerry to start a family. The city, he said, was much the same as it was when he left -- an observation that spurred his early involvement in politics.

"That's when I decided that in order to make a better place for my family and to raise my children is to get involved and change some of the things that I wanted to change back then," he said.

Tran -- a senior manager for a software development company -- spent four years on the Planning Board, before seeking an At-large City Council seat in 2005. He won, becoming the first person of color to hold an elected office in the city, an assertion North Central Massachusetts Minority Coalition Administrator Adrian Ford confirmed. This accomplishment is among his proudest achievements, Tran said.

He was re-elected six times, and among the top two vote-getters in the 2015 and 2017 elections.

His appeal? Tran cites his experience in both the private and public sectors and ability to relate to residents.

"I can relate to anyone who is an immigrant, Anyone who has gone through the process to become a U.S. citizen. I can relate to anyone who grew up poor as well as anyone who has worked hard and become part of the middle class," he said.

"I lived that dream and, back in those days, they called it the American dream. I want to be able to provide that to the people in this district as well as to the new generation coming up."

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